Decorative bannerCHAPTERII.(1714.)
Decorative banner
theking’s proclamation against the Pretender, in which 100,000l.was offered for the capturing him alive, caused angry discussion in the Commons. Pulteney said, in his lofty way, that if the Pretender did not come over, the money would be saved; and, if he did, the sum would be well laid out in the catching of him! Campion and Shippen denounced the outlay, and Sir William Wyndham, casting blame on the king’s words, was called upon to assign a reason for his censure. Wyndham would not condescend to explain. By a vote of 208 to 129 he was subjected to be reprimanded by the Speaker. The minority withdrew from the House, and when the Speaker reproved the Jacobite member, and extolled his own lenity in the words and spirit of the reproof, Wyndham would neither admit the justice of the censure, nor acknowledge any obligation to him who administered it.
CARTE, THE JACOBITE.
‘What will King Lewis do for the Chevalier?’ was the next query of the Londoners. The King of France and Navarre soon showed his indisposition to do anythingfor the substantial good of the Stuarts. Quidnuncs in the Cheapside taverns made light of ‘your JamesIII.’ They advised him to learn to get his bread by tile-making, by cutting corns, by selling Geneva, or by turning horse-doctor. They cocked their hats as they swaggered home on the causeway, but the low whistling of a Jacobite air, by some hopeful person on the opposite side of the street, showed them that the White Rose was not so withered as they thought it to be. Men’s minds were anxious as to coming struggles, though the Hanoverians affected much, and well-founded, confidence. Little else was thought of. The newspapers seemed to wake up from absorbing contemplation when they announced, as if they scarcely had time for the doing of it, that ‘about a fortnight ago died Mr. William Pen, the famous Quaker.’ One man, at least, as grave as Pen, stooped to make a joke, in order to show his principles. He walked abroad in a lay habit, but there were many people who passed by, or met him in the street, who very well knew Mr. Carte, the ex-reader of the Abbey Church, at Bath. He had avoided taking the oaths which were supposed to secure the allegiance of the swearer to the Hanoverian king. Mr. Carte, happening to be overtaken in the streets by a shower of rain, was accosted by a coachman with the cry of ‘Coach, your reverence?’ ‘No, honest friend,’ replied the nonjuring parson, ‘this is noreignfor me to take a coach in!’ Smaller jokes cost some men their lives. A nod or a shrug was a perilous luxury. At the first courtheld atSt.James’s, Colonel Chudleigh, a zealous Whig, marked some jocular vivacity on the part of Mr. Aldworth, M.P. for New Windsor. The Colonel took it in an offensive light, and when exchange of words had heated him, he cast the most offensive epithet he could think of at Aldworth, by calling him ‘Jacobite!’ Almost at the foot of the king’s throne, it was nearly equivalent to calling Aldworth ‘Liar!’ The two disputants descended the stairs, entered a coach together, and drove to Mary-le-Bone fields. In a few minutes after the two angry men had alighted, the Colonel stretched Aldworth dead upon the grass, and returned alone to the levee. This was the second bloodshed in the old Jacobite and Hanoverian quarrel.
AN OLD AND NEW LORD CHANCELLOR.
Shortly after this duel, Lord Townshend was seen to enter Lord Chancellor Harcourt’s house, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from which he soon after issued, carrying with him the Purse and Great Seal. These symbols of power he had obtained by warrant signed by the king’s hand. On his way from Lord Harcourt’s house to the palace, Townshend left word with Lord Cowper to wait on the king atSt.James’s at one o’clock,—and men who saw my Lord on his way made, probably, as shrewd guess as himself as to the result of his visit.
The king received him in the closet. Cowper’s acute eye recognised the Purse and Seal lying in the window. His Majesty, in a few words in French, shortly committed them to his keeping, ‘having,’ says Cowper in his Diary, ‘been well satisfied with thecharacter he had heard of me.’ Cowper replied in English, saying, among things less noteworthy, ‘that he had surrendered the Great Seal to the late Queen, believing she was going into measures which would raise France again, and ruin the common cause.’
After the new Chancellor had taken his leave, the following little dramatic scene occurred. ‘The Prince was in the outer room,’ says Cowper, ‘and made me a very handsome and hearty compliment both in French and English, and entered very kindly into talk with me. Among other things, speaking of the Princess’s coming, I wished she was here while the weather was good, lest she should be in danger in her passage; he said Providence had hitherto so wonderfully prospered his family’s succeeding to the Crown in every respect, by some instances, that he hoped it would perfect it, and believed they should prosper in every circumstance that remained.’
PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION.
The next circumstance was the spectacle of the coronation, which soon followed that of the public entry. Among the advertisements offering accommodation to see the show, there was one of a house, near the Abbey, ‘with an excellent prospect, and also with a back door out of Thieving Lane into the house. There will be a good fire,’ it is added, ‘and a person to attend with all manner of conveniences.’ Meanwhile, Mr. Noble’s shop in the New Exchange, Strand, was beset by ladies, or their servants, eager to buy the Coronation favour with the Union Arms, which had been sanctioned by the Earl Marshal, who had also (it is to be hoped,with reluctance) approved of the poetical motto without which the favour was not to be sold:
King George, our DefenderFrom Pope and Pretender.
King George, our DefenderFrom Pope and Pretender.
King George, our Defender
From Pope and Pretender.
—There was a great pinning of them on as breast knots and shoulder knots, and a good deal of gallantry and flirtation went on between young ladies and gentlemen helping to adorn each other.
THE SCENE IN THE ABBEY.
The ceremony was of the usual sort. King George was crowned King of France, as well as of Great Britain and Ireland. In proof of his right, ‘two persons, representing the Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy,’ consorted with peers of more sterling coinage. These ‘persons’ were, on this occasion, a couple of players. They wore crimson velvet mantles, lined with white sarcenet, furred with miniver, and powdered with ermine. Each of them held in his hand a ‘cap of cloth of gold, also furred and powdered with ermine.’ They did homage to the king, as the English peers did, and when these put on their coronets in the royal presence, the sham Dukes clapped their caps jauntily on their heads. This part of the spectacle was the only part that afforded merriment to the Jacobite nobility, all of whom were present, from Bolingbroke, with his three bows bringing his head to the ground, to JamesII.’s old mistress, the Countess of Dorchester, who made saucy remarks on all that passed.
WHIGS AND JACOBITES.
The Whig Lady Cowper says in her Memoirs that the Jacobites looked as cheerful as they could, but were very peevish with every one that spoke to them.There was no remedy for them, remarks my Lady in her Diary, but patience. ‘So everybody was pleased, or pretended to be so.’ Lady Dorchester is an exception to the rule. When Archbishop Tenison went round the throne, formally asking the consent of the people at large to the making of the new king, the lively Jacobite countess remarked to Lady Cowper, ‘Does the old fool think anybody here will sayno!to him, when there are so many drawn swords?’ The will was there, but the expression of it was kept down. Lady Dorchester was not the only saucily-disposed lady present. The Tory Lady Nottingham rudely shoved the ex-Tory Lady Cowper from her place. The latter found refuge on the pulpit stairs. ‘Her ill-breeding,’ says Lady Cowper, in her Diary, ‘got me the best place in the Abbey, for I saw all the ceremony, which few besides did. The lords that were over against me, seeing me thus mounted, said to my lord that they hoped I would preach. To which, my lord laughing, answered, he believed that I had zeal enough for it, but that he did not know I could preach.’ To which my Lord Nottingham answered, ‘Oh, my lord, indeed you must pardon me, she can and has preached for the last four years such doctrines as, had she been prosecuted in any court for them, your lordship yourself could not defend!’ After this little passage, when the scene was changed to Westminster Hall, the usual challenge was fruitlessly made by the hereditary champion. The banquet was held and came to an end. The king and guests departed. The wearywaiting-men tooktheirrefreshment, and when they came to collect the ‘properties’ of the scene—plate, knives, forks, viands, table cloths—nearly all had disappeared. Great outcry arose, and the rogues were commanded in advertisements to make restitution, or dreadful penalty was to follow; but they seem to have kept all they took that day, and to have escaped detection.
TORY MOBS.
The day did not pass off decorously in the streets. Some unwelcome cries reached the king’s ears as he walked along the platform between the Abbey and the Hall. At night, Tory mobs, on pretence that the Whigs, by the motto on their ‘favours,’ showed a disposition to ‘burn the Pope and the Pretender, with Dr. Sacheverel to boot,’ lit up bonfires, danced round them to rebel airs, and while some of the celebrants shouted for Sacheverel, others uttered blasphemy and ill-wishes against King George. In country places, similar incidents occurred; but messengers were despatched thither, and they soon returned, bringing the worst of the offenders with them through London to its various prisons. York, Norwich, and Bedford; Reading, Taunton, Bristol, and Worcester, yielded the greatest number of seditious rioters. A boy, twelve years of age, was brought up as leader of the Taunton mob! The most notable person bagged by the messengers was Alderman Perks of Worcester. The Jacobites in London witnessed his passage to Newgate with manifestations that showed they looked on him as a martyr. On the other hand, the Irish Protestants in London made a manifestationin favour of Church and Government. In commemoration of the delivery of their fathers from the massacre in Ireland of so many of their contemporaries, in October 1641, by the Papists, these Whig loyalists marched in procession at 10A.M.toSt.Dunstan’s, where they heard a sermon from Dr. Storey, Dean of Limerick. At noon, they again marched in procession to the Old King’s Head, Holborn, where they dined, drank, and cheerfully celebrated the massacre in which so many innocent persons had perished.
THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE PARK.
Serious as the times were, the king and royal family manifested no fear. They were unostentatiously brave. The most bitter Tory could not but admire them, walking roundSt.James’s Park, in a November afternoon, almost unattended; not guarded at all. This too was at the time when the Attorney-General was ‘prosecuting authors,’ as the journals have it, ‘for reflecting expressions in their writings against the king.’ The Government were at that very moment complaining of seditious meetings being held, by the encouragement of some whose duty it was to suppress them; meetings which were accompanied by rioting, and often followed by murder or attempts at such crime. It was a time when almost all the lords in office are said to have received the Pretender’s ‘Declaration’ and his other manifestoes by ‘foreign post’ or the ambassadors’ bags. In November 1714, a pamphlet was published with this significant title: ‘The sentiments of our Forefathers relative to Succession to the Crown, Hereditary Right, and Non-Resistance. Dedicated toall those who prefer Hereditary Right to a Parliamentary one, notwithstanding the latter is likely to take place. By a Lover of Right.’SEDITIOUS PAMPHLETS.Every night were significant works like this, and even more scandalous pamphlets, cried through the streets. As yet, however, no vindictive measures were adopted. It was thought politic to give the Tories good words, but not to put any trust in them. Their audacity sometimes challenged prosecution. Mr. Pottes was arrested for a ‘provoking’ pamphlet: ‘Reasons for Declaring a War against France;’ and messengers were busy in looking after the author of a ‘Test offered to the Consideration of Electors of Great Britain, which at one view discovers those Members of Parliament, who were for or against the Hanoverian Succession.’ A thousand pounds was the sum offered to anyone who could and would discover the author of the ‘Test,’ and half that sum was offered for the discovery of the printer. The Government dreaded the effects of these writings on the elections to the first new parliament under King George. When the matter was happily over, the ‘squibs’ did not die out. The Whigs, to show how Tories had triumphed, published a (supposed) list of expenses of a Tory election in the West. Among the numerous items were: ‘For roarers of the word,Church!40l.’ ‘For several gallons of Tory Punch drank on the tombstones, 30l.’ ‘For Dissenter Damners, 40l.’ The Tory journal writers laughed, and expressed a hope that at the forthcoming anniversary of the birthday of glorious Queen Anne, there would be more enthusiastic jollitythan on the natal anniversaries of Queen Elizabeth and King William, which were still annually kept. The public were requested to remember that Anne as much excelled every English sovereign since Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had excelled every one before her. Whigs looked at one another in taverns and asked, ‘Does the fellow mean that Brandy Nan was better than King George?’
JACOBITE CLUBS.
In the Tory pamphlet, ‘Hannibal not at our gates,’ the writer sought to persuade the people that there was no danger a-foot. In the Whig pamphlet ‘Hannibal at our gates, or the progress of Jacobitism, with the present danger of the Pretender,’ &c., Londoners were especially warned of the reality of the peril. The Jacobite clubs, it was said, had ceased to toast the Jacobite king, or ‘impostor,’ under feigned names. They were described as ‘so many publick training schools where the youth of the nation were disciplined into an opinion of the justice of his title,’ and into various other opinions which were strongly denounced. The writer has an especial grievance in the fact that an honest Englishman cannot show respect to King William by keeping his birthday, without running the chance of being in the Counter as a rioter, if he only happens to fall into the hands of a Tory magistrate. Respect for princes, according to this Whig, is a courteous duty, and, forthwith, he speaks of the Chevalier as a ‘notorious bastard,’ and of his mother, Mary of Modena, as a ‘woman of a bloody and revengeful temper.’
ROYALTIES.
Rash deeds followed harsh words. Among the persons assaulted in the streets, on political grounds, was the Duke of Richmond, who was roughly treated one dark night. Such an attack on a Duke who was an illegitimate son of the Stuart King CharlesII., by a Popish mistress, Louise de Querouaille, was taken by the Government as a certain evidence of a perhaps too exuberant loyalty. Nevertheless, the king continued to go about without fear. He drove almost unattended to dine or sup with various gentlemen and noblemen. We hear that ‘His Majesty honoured Sir HenrySt.John, father of Viscount Bolingbroke, with his royal presence at dinner.’ The king thus sat at table with a man whose son he would unreluctantly have hanged! As for the Prince and Princess of Wales, they were as often at the play in times of personal danger, as princes and princesses are in times of no peril whatever. Perhaps they trusted a little in the proclamation against Papists and Nonjurors, whereby the former were disarmed, and were (or could be) confined to their houses, or be kept to a limit within five miles of their residences. The oath of allegiance was to be taken by all disaffected persons, and among the drollest street scenes of the day was that of some Dogberry stopping a man on the causeway and testing his loyalty by putting him on his affidavit!
AT ST. JAMES’S.
There was zeal enough and to spare among the clergy of all parties. Not very long after the Princess of Wales was established atSt.James’s, Robinson, bishop of London, sent in a message to her by Mrs.Howard, to the effect that, being Dean of the Chapel, he thought it his duty to offer to satisfy any doubts or scruples the Princess might entertain with respect to the Protestant religion, and to explain what she might not yet understand. The Princess was naturally ‘a little nettled.’—‘Send him away civilly,’ she said, ‘though he is very impertinent to suppose that I, who refused to be Empress for the Protestant religion, do not understand it fully.’ The Bishop thought that the august lady did not understand it at all, for the Princess had declared among her ladies ‘Dr. Clarke shall be one of my favourites. His writings are the finest things in the world.’ Now Dr. Clarke was looked upon as a heretic by Robinson, for Clarke was not a Trinitarian according to the creed so-called of Athanasius. Lady Nottingham, High Church to the tips of her fingers, denounced the Doctor as a heretic. Lady Cowper gently asked her to quote any heretical passage from Dr. Clarke’s books. Clarke’s books! The lady declared she never had and never would look into them. Cowper mildly rebuked her. Cowper’s royal mistress laughed, and the ‘Duchess ofSt.Alban’s,’ says Lady Cowper, ‘put on the Princess’s shift, according to Court Rules, when I was by, she being Groom of the Stole.’
ELECTIONEERING TACTICS.
The first election of Members of Parliament which was about to take place excited the liveliest and most serious interest throughout the kingdom, but especially in London. Mighty consequences depended on the returns. To influence these, Popping issued from underhis sign of theBlack Raven, in Paternoster Row, a pamphlet entitled, ‘Black and White Lists of all Gentlemen who voted in Person, for or against the Protestant Religion, the Hanoverian Succession, the Trade and the Liberties of our Country, from the Glorious Revolution to the Happy Accession of King George.’ These lists, like others previously published, were as useful to the Jacobites as to the Hanoverians, and perhaps were intended to be so. A phrase in the Preface, which seems thorough Whig, was understood in every Jacobite coffee-house. ‘French Bankers, Friends of the Faction, are continually negotiating great Sums for Bills of Exchange upon London,—to support the Pretender’s party, and bribe Voters.’ The various questions to which these division lists refer are very numerous. Among them may be noted the names of those who voted for or against the Crown being given to the Prince of Orange,—of members who, in 1706, voted for tacking the Bill for preventing occasional Conformity, to a Money Bill, to secure its passing in the House of Lords; finally,—of those members ‘who are not numbered among Tackers or Sneakers.’ On the other hand, a decidedly Tory pamphlet was circulated, in which the Londoners, and, through them, Englishmen generally, were implored not to vote for men who wanted war, whatever might be the motive. It bids each elector bless the present peace, ‘while his sons are not pressed into the war nor his daughters made the followers of camps.’ This was bringing the subject thoroughly home to the bosoms of the Athenians.
ROYAL CHAPLAINS.
There were people who were to be more easily got at than the pamphleteers. Dr. Bramston, for a sermon preached in the Temple Church, was struck out of the list of Royal Chaplains. He published the discourse, for his justification. The most rabid Whig in the kingdom could find no hostility in it, nor the most rabid Tory any support. The Court found offence enough. Dr. Bramston and his fellow chaplains, who had read prayers to Queen Anne,—Dr. Browne, Dr. Brady, the Rev. Mr. Reeves of Reading, and the Rev. Mr. Whitfield, were informed that they were not only struck out of the list of her late Majesty’s chaplains, but that ‘they would not be continued when his Majesty is pleased to make a new choice.’ Compassion is not aroused for Dr. Brady, he being half of that compound author Tate and Brady, of whom many persons have had such unpleasant experience on recurring Sundays at church. Tate helped Brady to ‘improve’ the Psalms, after the fashion in which he had ‘improved’ Shakespeare; and it is hard to say which king suffered most at his hands—King Lear or King David!
On the other hand, the feeling on the Jacobite side very much resembled that which is recorded in the ‘Memoirs of P. P., clerk of this Parish,’—in which parish, Jenkins, the farrier, ‘never shoed a horse of a Whig or fanatic, but he lamed him sorely.’ Turner, the collar-maker, was held to have been honoured by being clapt in the stocks for wearing an oaken bough on the 29th of May;—Pilcocks, the exciseman, wasvalued for the laudable freedom of speech which had lost him his office;—and White, the wheelwright, was accounted of good descent, his uncle having formerly been servitor at Maudlin College, where the glorious Sacheverel was educated!
THE CHEVALIER IN LONDON.
At a somewhat later period, a pamphlet was published, in which the Chevalier deSt.George is introduced, saying:—‘OldLewisassur’d me he would never desert my Interest, and he kept hisBona fidetill he was drub’d into the humble Condition of su’ing for Peace, and I was seemingly to be sacrificed to the Resentment of my Enemies; but ourdear Sisterand theToriesconcerted privately to elude the force of the Treaty, and kept me at Bar-le-Duc, from whence I made a Trip to Somerset House, but was soon Frighten’d away again by the sound of a Proclamation, at which Sir Patrick and I scour’d off. Soon after, dear Sister departed this mortal Life, but the Schemes being yet not entirely finish’d, and my good Friends not having the Spirit of Greece,Hanoverwhipt over before me.’ This passage will recall an incident in Mr. Thackeray’s ‘Esmond.’
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